David Sugden

David Sugden
After many false starts with 'organised' web logs like Blogger - I gave up and thought I'd have more interest and more input, if I did my own. This is just a simple web page, so any contributions will have to be via email blog@village-e-learning.co.uk - I promise to edit very little and to publish all lucid comments! Please state how I should sign you off (anon; my name; my name and address etc). I've deleted the comments feature, because of all the spam I was getting - sorry! e-Mail me if you have anything to say - address above. Click here to go to beginning of blog.

        

New blog page - will replace this page - http://eduvel.wordpress.com

   

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2009
January - March

2008
October - December
July - September
April - June
January - March

2007

October - December
July - September
April - June
January-March

2006
2006 - all


Friends/Colleagues

Blogs I read
Lisa Valentine

James Clay
Dave Foord
Lilian Soon
 

Resources
Filleting fish 
**Copyright free images
 Resource page
**Student Life.

My other 'stuff'
**Copyright FREE  photo's
My MySpace blog
Googlepages
Blogspot Blog

Holidays and Gigs
 WBL e-Guides
 Emma's Wedding
LSN gigs - first
USA

Featured Videos
Live Action Role Play
Nasty Chicken
Nasty Burgers
REAL Simpsons
Singh Simpsons
Boris Johnson tackle

Darkhorse Radio

View my delicious bookmarks here Open Grazr

View the BBC Education RSS feed here  Open Grazr
 

Catch up on my blog at

http://eduvel.wordpress.com/

http://dsugdenholidays.wordpress.com

 

   
19th May 2009

New blog page - has now replaced this page - http://eduvel.wordpress.com

I have recently been honoured by becoming a TechDis Accredited Trainer.

This allows me to provide training in the use of TechDis resources and techniques - something TechDis themselves don't always have the capacity to do. The idea is that those institutions who require training from TechDis are presented with a list of private trainers from who to choose and negotiate terms and content with. I am now one of those trainers - please drop me a line.

 

   
13th May 2009

Many of my readers will know that I've been looking for a new blog template to write my 'stuff' on. This self-penned HTML site has been written with the aid of MS FrontPage since it first started back in May 2005. Since Microsoft decided not to upgrade FrontPage to work on Vista or with Office 2007 (and I've lost my disk to check the claim that the old version doesn't work with either) I've had only intermittent access to the software required to update. When I'm working away with my Vista laptop, I can't blog the same (I can but have to use other templates which don't fit the style of this particular blog).

And now the Vista laptop is playing the silly bugger. (See more on this later)

So I've started another blog at http://eduvel.wordpress.com (there is a RSS feed from that page @ http://eduvel.wordpress.com/feed and can also be found on the top left hand side of the page). The Wordpress blog will continue to have the same sort of content as this one and where necessary will link back to issues raised or commented in here. The real benefit of Wordpress for me is that it will allow me to blog from anywhere, as it is totally web based. It has nice clean lines and many of the features (such as comments) I've been unable to supply on this site. I feel sad to be moving but such things happen - we must move on.

I hope that you - the 500 or so visitors I get every three months won't mind coming over to my new blog. Enjoy the ride. :-)

6th May 2009

I'm currently sat in the Savoy Hotel in Blackpool. I'm on my second pot of tea! I daren't try the coffee because I've been so disappointed with hotel coffees over the years and don't want to be disappointed AS WELL AS cold. The first tea was nice enough to risk a second. But it's so cold! I'm sat in the lounge, overlooking a dirty, murky sea on what is a pretty miserable day outside. Sharon is doing her first LSN gig and back in the days before we had a SatNav (she calls it Jeffrey) I volunteered to come along with her as moral support and travel guide. As it was in my diary, I left it there, all the time thinking - if it's nice I can walk the Golden miles and if it's not nice I can sit in a hotel lounge and work! Well it wasn't nice damn it.

Yesterday was the RSC-NW Mobile Learning gig at the Leyland Hotel in Leyland. It wasn't all that well attended but those that did come along seemed to get a great deal out of it. There was much Twittering (#mnw09) and many examples of good practice both active and emerging across the region. The morning traffic was the worst I've seen it over there. I struggled to get as far as the M60 in an hour and only managed to get to the hotel on time (after 1.75 hours) when a gap opened up in the traffic coming off at Blackburn. Today wasn't much better, although we did make it to this point 10-15 minutes earlier.

Last weekend was Karen's surprise birthday weekend and it went like a dream. She was completely bowled over by the people who had attended. The group was pretty evenly spilt between family and ex-NLN Mentors. The Mentors had clubbed together and bought her an iTouch for her birthday, which was suitably well received. At this point I have not put the images onto Flickr - but will do when I manage to collate them from the various cameras. For now, enjoy the video!

26th April 2009

Sharon took the Americans back to the airport on Wednesday while I set off early and went to Derwentside College in Consett. Here I was to meet members of my BDP PDA Cohort 1 to chat about progress and to discuss ILT. It was a good productive meeting but a long day out. Things didn't quite return to normal on the Thursday as both Sharon and I had to travel down to London for some LSN training on the Friday.

We set off on Thursday afternoon because the trains were cheaper and we thought it would be nicer to have an evening relaxing in the hotel instead of having to get up at 4.30am on the Friday and still risk being late. We then thought it would be nice to go and see a show on the Friday and stay over a further night (well Sharon thought that - I just went along with it). We had a nice but eventful dinner in the hotel. Eventful because I found a piece of metal in my starter and because they couldn't understand why 'the company' were laying for two people min the room - they must have thought that I'd got lucky! It took someone from LSN the day after, to sort that one out. The training went ok and in the evening - this time we went to see Joseph. Which was fine - but not at all what I expected. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber must have been tripping on Acid when they wrote it . It was like a bible story told in the style of Monty Python sketches with Elvis!

The saddest thing - and a real reality check - was coming out of the theatre and making our way back down The Strand. Other theatre were chucking out too and there was a real stream of theatre goers making their way to various parts of London. But lined up quietly along half the route (and patiently I must add) were many (hundreds?) of homeless waiting for a meal. Aluminium cartons of hot food were being unloaded from an unassuming red Transit van and (presumably - I didn't see it happen) being handed out to the unfortunate (the word depends on your opinion) recipients. When you think that we, the theatre goers, had paid a minimum of £30 to see a show and compare it to the day THEY must have had - it does make you think.

We spent Saturday at the museums (how cultural) but only managed the Science and bits of the Victoria and Albert Museums before it was time to go. The video above was taken on my Nokia N95 8 gig via QIK.

17th April 2009

France was good.Raining in France. Gail and Sharon

We've just returned from a short Easter break at Mark's place in Normandy. This time we took Gail, Sharon's sister, with us. The Americans (Gail and their mum) had arrived on April 1st - the day I was on eCPD duty in Leeds for cohort 2 (too exhausted to blog about that at the time) and will go back next Wednesday (I'm hopefully in Consett - but am just downloading 192 emails before I can say for certain). They spent the first weekend in Wales. Sharon drove them both down there on the Friday and left mum there - to be 'kept' for a week before being 'transported' to Joanne's (the other sister) in East Anglia - from where we picked her back up yesterday upon our return from France. phew. (cont .. 17th April 2009 ...)

Gail had been to Paris before but not to the real France so we were able to allow her to experience some very French things. Like the many men we saw urinating at the side of the road (far more this trip than on any other trip Sharon and I have made recently) and the mad way in which some town centres allow traffic merging from the right to have right of way! Sisters_GivernyAnd the rain! It poured down every day (although to be fair not 'all' day) until Easter Monday. This didn't stop us getting about and seeing many different parts of Normandy including the D-day beaches, Mont St Michel (this was an in and out job - one look at the car park and we took photos and did a runner - all the way to Fourgeres) and Vire. There's nothing on the roundabout in Vire (yet?) this year but we still managed to watch the madness that goes on there every minute of every day.

We called at Giverny on the way back, to see Monet's garden and the weather stayed kind to us. Sharon and I had been last year and had a guided tour of the gardens and the house, so we were in a good position this year to take the tour unguided. We'd been told that the gardens changed with the seasons (doh!) and don't they just!  Although still early in the year - the gardens themselves only opened to the public of April 1st - they were still a riot of colour and busy. However, they were not as busy as in summer and the tour of the house was much more rewarding than the first time we went.

I've spent a few hours looking at work emails but have decided (having dealt with really urgent matters) to leave them now until Monday - hopefully I'll feel more like working then ;-0

27th March 2009

Cycle ride '99

Mobile Learning Blog

Lesson Observations

Learning Styles

iPhone Trial

Books I read

Live Journal

 

This will probably be the last post of this quarter, I'll have to start another page for April. Just like last year and thePicture of Wagamama dish of food one before (2008; 2007) the quarter finishes with the e-Guides National event.

This year's event, like the one in 2007 was at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham. This year, however, unlike the previous years, I didn't get to blog any of the events live from the venue. This was partly due to incompetence on my part (read on) and partly due to the changed face of Web this last few weeks.  I also delivered'  three workshops, so that cut down time a bit. My enjoyment of the first evening, a discussion between Gilly Salmon and Alan Clarke was spoiled because I could no long communicate with Jaiku via the phone. This ability was removed when Google made Jaiku open-source earlier in the year and reduced the qualities that Jaiku enjoyed over Twitter (although there are still many). So, there I was, with only my crappy K850i (crappy in the sense that internet communication via this model can be likened to sliding down the side of a cheese grater - slow, painful and not something you would choose to do). I did send the odd text to Lilian to keep up my spirits. I'd even forgotten about Ping.fm - which could at least have send contributions to Jaiku and Twitter. There was plenty that I'd wanted to say about the discussion these two eminent people were speaking about, partly in agreement, partly in disagreement but mostly so I didn't forget. But it goes to show that sometimes, the things we use and get used to can change and that we have to be prepared.

I'm more prepared now though ..
Me, Mr Gormley, Tony, Gill, DOT and TESSFinally,
I've got my new phone - a Nokia N95, black 8 gig. It arrived this morning, so it's still a mystery to me, but already I have got it n my Web n walk contract and on my home WiFi - which will enable me to be all the things that my iPhone was and wasn't (fingers crossed). I still need to set up Shozu, email, download a QR code reader, set up my QIK connection and learn how to save things - but wow - what a phone (for now). We've come over to Crosby, near Liverpool this weekend, to see Tony and Gill at Gill's sisters house, which overlooks the beach at Waterloo. We had a couple of pints in the old pub round the back - where they still serve you at the table. good atmosphere. Then we had a sumptuous and late supper with lots of wine before going to bed. We needed the long and wind strewn walk this morning - along the Crosby beach and around the Anthony Gormley iron men. Loving the phone - although there are still a few quirks. http://dsugden.posterous.com/nokia-n95-8gig

On my way to Nottingham on Wednesday, I listened to James Clay's latest Podcast. This inspired me to blog about it elsewhere. See: http://dsugden.posterous.com/cpd

21st March 2009

Cycle ride '99

Mobile Learning Blog

Lesson Observations

Learning Styles

iPhone Trial

Books I read

Live Journal

 

Spring! This week has been a lovely week for weather. Bright and sunny, if still a little cold. Today, Sharon dropped my by the University and I walked up though town, up past Kirklees College, through the park and over Marsh to Quarmby. It got a bit windier up there but as I dropped down through A picture of the canal at Slaithwaite BasinLongwood and up through Golcar it warmed up nicely. I had a cup of tea at home before going down to Slaithwaite to pick my car up. Lovely morning. Whilst still in town today, I saw that the local Traffic Wardens have been renamed - Civil Enforcement Officers! What's all that about?

We went to the theatre last night to see Return to the Forbidden Planet - by the Woodhouse Players, a local amateur dramatic society. It wasn't the same quality as some of the professional productions we've seen but was highly entertaining nevertheless. Because the Lawrence Batley Theatre is quite small, we were almost on the stage - which to be fair, added to the sense of occasion. The players themselves seemed to be having as good a time as us in the audience and we all ended up dancing in the aisles. One thing that stood out for me (if you've never seen this play you won't 'get' this) was the narrator: You will possibly remember Patrick Moore doing the videoed narration in professional productions? In this one, the older, well spoken guy was reading his Shakespeare-like script in front of a modern Smart IWB!

The working week has been as intense as others of late. On Tuesday I delivered a MoLeNET m-Assessment workshop in Leeds. On Wednesday I met most of my PDAs at the Cohort 1 day 2 event, also in Leeds and on Thursday I attended TechDis Certified Trainer training in York. This is quite exciting and potentially good for my business. I've always subscribed to the TechDis ethos and working with like-minded others, those also attending the training day, will be a pleasure. Yesterday, I spend the day with a colleague who is interested in doing work in Turkey and we prepared a planning document ready for her to deliver a conference paper in Istanbul next month. She and I will deliver a week long European Community Project course together in Leeds, in June - so, fingers crossed!

   
 

Hosted by http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=8553337 - Well worth a visit - no fuss, easy to use.

  back to top This 'new' page was started on April 1st 2009. It was copied over from the original file - which was re-named 2009_1.htm. Clicker was on 6,327 which was 500 visits since 1st January. (Jan = 516), (Sept = 5,311 + 516 = 5,827)
(July = 4,908 - 403) (March = 4,198- 780) 3,418 - 677 (Dec = 2,741 - 514) (Sept = 2,227 - 629) (March = 1,598).